FunTrivia People Mix: Vol 31 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sarah

The former Duchess of York, nee Sarah Ferguson, shares her first name with Sarah Michelle Gellar. She also shares it with the biblical wife of Abraham. She ceased to use that title in October 2025.

Question by player WeEATcrayons

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452-1519) was not only a brilliant painter, known for works like "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa", but also a skilled scientist, engineer, inventor, anatomist, architect, musician and writer. He conducted detailed dissections of human bodies and created precise anatomical drawings that were centuries ahead of time. He also designed machines such as early prototypes of helicopters, tanks and bridges.

Besides these, he explored fields like geology, botany, optics and hydrodynamics, often keeping detailed observations in his famous notebooks. Finally, he could play instruments like the lyre and was known for composing and improvising music. And these are just some of his achievements.

Question by player panagos

Answer: Josiah Wedgwood

Darwin, the English naturalist, is well known for his contributions toward our understanding of the evolutionary process, primarily through the publication of his 1859 work "On the Origin of Species". His grandfathers were Erasmus Darwin, a key figure and thinker of the Midlands Enlightenment, and Josiah Wedgwood, as mentioned, a potter, and an abolitionist.

The Darwins and the Wedgwoods were closely allied and, as a result, Charles and his wife Emma (nee Wedgwood) had had an association since their early childhood.

Question by player pollucci19

Answer: Oscar Pistorius

Pistorius, born in 1986, was an extraordinary athlete. His legs were amputated when he was a baby due to an abnormality and he used carbon-fibre prostheses to run as a sprinter. These were so effective that he was able to run in the Olympics for able bodied athletes and some claimed they gave Pistorius an unfair advantage.

In February 2013 he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp at their home and was jailed in October 2014 for five years for culpable homicide, later extended on appeal to fifteen years.

He was released on parole in January 2024.

Question by player BrightonDragon

Answer: John Keats

John Keats never published until he was eighteen years old. Then he would have only six to seven more years to write. Because he believed that he was destined to die at a young age, he wrote feverishly and cranked out some of English literature's greatest masterpieces, including the ones mentioned in the question and "Ode to a Nightingale" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci."

Question by player alaspooryoric

Answer: Saddam Hussein

The Umm al-Qura ("Mother of All Cities") mosque in Baghdad, Iraq, was formerly named the Umm al-Ma'arik ("Mother of All Battles") mosque. It is the largest Sunni place of worship in Baghdad. It was named after Saddam Hussein's declaration that the 1991 Gulf War was the "Mother of All Battles." Operation Desert Storm did not turn out well for Iraqi forces who were expelled from recently-annexed Kuwait. US President George H. W. Bush's decision not to capture Hussein and effect regime change in Iraq allowed him to declare a victory.

Question by player FatherSteve

Answer: War photojournalists

Kathy Gannon, Margaret Bourke-White, Anja Niedringhaus and Gerda Taro are women in the field of photojournalism who risked their lives taking photographs of wars and worldwide conflicts. Kathy Gannon, a Canadian, covered the Afghanistan War for many years until she was killed by a terrorist in Afghanistan. Margaret Bourke-White was the first American female featured on "Life Magazine" for her coverage of the war. Anja Niedriunghaus, native of Germany, covered the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the September 11 destruction in New York City and the Iraq War.

She was killed by a terrorist in Afghanistan. Gerda Taro was the first female to serve as a photojournalist and served during the Spanish Civil War. She was mortally wounded in Spain in 1937.

Question by player milliesmall

Answer: John Dillinger

Notorious American gangster John Dillinger escaped from jail twice. While at Allen County Jail, Dillinger's men came armed with guns and posed as state penitentiary officials, shooting the Sheriff, they then freed Dillinger. Years later, Dillinger was back in jail, this time at the 'escape-proof' Crown Point Prison in Indiana. Using an old piece of washboard, he carved it into a gun and darkened it with shoe polish, escaping from jail without shooting anybody.

He was killed July 22, 1934 by the FBI in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago.

Question by player napierslogs

Answer: PT-109

PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant Junior Grade John F. Kennedy, later the 35th US President, was run down and cut in two by the Japanese destroyer 'Amagiri' in the Solomon Islands in August 1943. Two crew members died but eleven survived, living on coconuts for a week before they were rescued. Ballard located the forward section of PT-109 and one of its torpedo tubes in May 2002. Among other famous shipwrecks located by Ballard were the German battleship Bismarck (torpedoed and scuttled in 1941 with over 2,000 lives lost), and the USS Yorktown (torpedoed in the 1942 Battle of Midway with 141 fatalities).

Question by player dsimpy

Answer: C.S. Lewis

Clive Staples ('Jack') Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland) in November 1898, but went to school and lived most of his life in England. J.R.R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in January 1892; T.S. Eliot in St Louis, Missouri, in September 1888; and Rudyard Kipling in Bombay (now Mumbai), India in 1865.

Question by player Ampelos